Managing Governance Crises: Policy Innovation Amid Economic Turbulence in Greece and Beyond

Contemporary governance systems are increasingly shaped by successive and overlapping multidimensional crises. Economic turbulence, fiscal pressures, social inequalities, pandemics or epidemics, energy insecurity, migration, climate-related risks, and geopolitical instability, have all tested the capacity of public institutions to respond effectively, preserve legitimacy, as well as adapt to rapidly changing contexts. These developments have renewed scholarly interest in crisis governance, institutional resilience, public policy innovation and the changing relationship of the multilevel governance structures, thus between national governments, subnational authorities and supranational institutions.

This Research Topic pays particular attention to Greece as a critical case of crisis-driven governance transformation, given its experience of sovereign debt crisis, austerity, administrative reform, fiscal surveillance, and subsequent exposure to new European and global challenges. However, the aim is not to examine Greece in isolation. Instead, the Research Topic seeks to place the Greek case within a broader comparative framework, inviting contributions from European and international contexts that illuminate how states, regions, cities, communities and supranational actors manage governance crises.

The central premise of this research topic is that crises are not only moments of disruption and institutional stress, but they may also become catalysts for policy innovation, structural changes, administrative reforms and new modes of coordination. Under conditions of constraint, governments may redesign public services, accelerate digital transformation, strengthen social protection and health systems, introduce new mechanisms of policy evaluation, or experiment with decentralized and participatory forms of governance. Yet such processes are uneven and widely contested. The capacity to innovate depends on institutional quality, administrative capacity, political leadership, fiscal capacity, public trust, policy legacies and the structure of multilevel governance.

On the abovementioned basis, theoretical, empirical, comparative, and policy-oriented contributions that examine the conditions under which crises generate institutional learning, policy change, or governance failure are welcome. This research topic is particularly interested in articles that move beyond descriptive accounts of crisis management and engage with broader questions of resilience, adaptation, legitimacy, and reform, in a comparative perspective.

Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
• Crisis governance and institutional resilience in Greece, Europe, and beyond;
• Policy innovation under economic turbulence, austerity, and fiscal constraint;
• Public administration reform, state capacity, and bureaucratic adaptation;
• Multilevel governance, decentralization, and local policy experimentation;
• The role of the European Union and international organizations in shaping domestic crisis responses;
• Welfare state resilience, social policy reform, and responses to inequality and vulnerability;
• Digital governance, data-driven policymaking, and evidence-informed reform during crises;
• Policy learning, policy transfer, and comparative lessons from successive crises;
• Democratic accountability, public trust, and legitimacy in emergency policymaking;
• The politics of reform, resistance, and institutional change;
• Economic governance, territorial inequalities, and social cohesion;
• Comparative perspectives on Southern Europe, EU member states, and international cases of crisis management.

We welcome contributions from political science, public policy, public administration, political economy, European studies, social policy, sociology and governance studies. Comparative analyses, single-case studies with strong theoretical relevance, mixed-methods research, policy evaluations and conceptual contributions are all encouraged. Suitable article types may include Original Research, Review, Systematic Review, Conceptual Analysis, Policy and Practice Reviews, Policy Briefs, Perspectives, and General Commentaries.

By bringing together diverse perspectives on governance crises and policy innovation, this research topic aims to advance scholarly understanding of how institutions adapt under pressure, how policy systems learn from turbulence, and how democratic governance can remain effective, legitimate and socially responsive in a polycrisis or permacrisis era.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Crisis governance; policy innovation; institutional resilience; economic turbulence; Greece; European Union; multilevel governance; public administration reform; welfare state; social policy reform; policy learning; decentralized governance; comparative g

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.